Title: The Book of Hours Author: Ellie (windblownellie@yahoo.com) Rating: PG Timeline: S4 Cancer-arc Category: VA/UST Summary: "He does not love her. That's too pat, trite, normal and fairy tale." **** Book of Hours **** Vigils *** Too many hours of Mulder's life had been passed in hospital corridors, guarding, watching, waiting, worrying. Here, the walls are bleakest, with no elementary school art or bad wallpaper to decorate them. The chairs are lonely, solitary, cold. There is too much white. He is unsure why he's here. She doesn't need him here, might not even want him here. But he couldn't leave, not after looking into Penny Northern's room and seeing her, shrouded in terry cloth, looking tiny and fragile. Never before had he seen her as a tragic figure. She was Imogen, not Ophelia. Not even Imogen. Though she be but little, she is fierce beyond Shakespeare's imagining, an echo of Boudicca or Artemisia, a Demeterian whirl of grace and fury. He loves that ferocity. No. He does not love her. That's too pat, trite, normal and fairy tale. Some days, especially in this last year, he wasn't even sure he liked her. If he loved her, it should be for her grace, forgiving him far more than any man merited. But he cannot recognize that now, and so cherishes the lesser, brighter fierceness. She would not have him prove devotion by riding out against dragons, but merely ask his company in the quest. He needs her on his quest, more than he realizes or admits to himself. He has wanted, but never needed anyone. His need is a pale cousin of love, is what he can comprehend the way he so often cannot comprehend her. Yet he cannot ignore the quick tightening in his chest that occurred when Kurt Crawford showed him the ova now filling his pocket, told him it was one half the necessary genetic material. He tells himself it was a horrific, heartbreaking revelation, and thinking instead of what one should do with a pocketful of ova. Leaning his dark head back, against the blank wall, he wishes he believed in a deity. Instead, all he's got to believe has been rendered brutally mortal. *** Lauds *** There is no dawn. Half a mile to the east, over the Capitol, the charcoal sky merely lightens to platinum. Pea gravel crunches underfoot as he steps from the pavement, molding itself around the treads of his running shoes. He exhales in steamy puffs, drifting away into the bitter air. Scully could have told him the names of the muscles still stiff in his thighs and calves, even after walking the blocks down here. But she is not here on the frost-rimed Mall. Not this morning, not this week. He keeps moving, feeling chilled as the air with his heart in limbo. At this hour, no tourists crawled across the landscape, and the unsavory characters of the Washington night had begun to recede with the fading sky. Ahead, west, balls of white light danced up through the low clouds, the first morning flights from National looking so tantalizingly like what he'd spent years chasing. Gravel spattered up from underfoot as he flew along, toward the looming obelisk of the Washington Monument. Pillar to bravery and this great novus ordo seclorum. There is no wisdom in the limp flags, damply clinging to their flagpoles, nor in the pale hulking stone, red warning light glowing bright against the grey morning. Trees, skeletal and lifeless, bordered the Reflecting Pool, reflecting nothing this morning. He paused under Lincoln's sagacious gaze, barely visible in the shadows, looking back down the pale expanse of Mall. Two footsteps sounded on the granite stairs behind him. "Agent Mulder." The smoke of his cigarette mingled with the frosty exhalation of his breath. "No." He heaved, lungs burning against the cold. This was not a path he could go down now. "My sympathies to Agent Scully." "Your sympathies will go a long way towards curing what's been done to her." He began walking away, back towards the white dome now faintly gleaming in the early light. "They could, if you want to play nice." Steam rolled off the river behind him, dissipating up over the grassy expanse, converging with fog and the puffs of his smoke. "She wouldn't like me making deals with the devil for her." "When you change your mind, and you will, AD Skinner knows how to contact me." There was something too knowing in his narrowed gaze, the wisdom of Machiavelli and serpents and those beyond rules. Mulder caught honest Abe's dark, solemn gaze over his shoulder, and shook his head. The Smoking Man merely shrugged, and Mulder could feel him watching as he turned back down the Mall. He refused to look back, focusing on the blood- dark spire of the Smithsonian Castle. *** Prime *** Monday morning, she was waiting for him, coffee mugs on his desk and casefile in hand as if the last week had never happened. He did not ask how she was feeling, or what she was planning on doing, or mention any of the thousand things whirring through his brain. He did not point out that rather than her usual cream and sugar, her blue cup wafted the scent of lemon and bergamot through the office. Mulder merely took his black, steaming mug and settled on the edge of his desk to listen to her, because pretending was easier. Scully presented the facts, her no-nonsense tone taking him through the relevant information. While she lacked the slides and glossy 8X10s he preferred to use to make his points, she did have concrete reality, while usually he only had hunches and nebulous connections. Initially, he was having trouble seeing why they should even bother with this case, which probably should have gone to the Civil Rights division, if it was an FBI matter at all. But it was something safe, he thought, and so would have agreed to it anyway. He'd not realized how much value was to be had in safety, before. When she mentioned a dead man's fingerprints at the scene of a murder, something flickered at the back of his brain. There were so many tales of the dead rising again. Like reality, he thought, mortality was perhaps more subjective than science would suppose. *** Terce *** The swampy, mucky field was littered with aircraft debris and the detritus of hundreds of human lives, gaudy bits of children's backpacks snagged on darkly charred metal, glasses floating in muddy pools. She strode through the wasteland, shockingly agile despite silly heels and trappy ground. The mud sucked at his shoes, and he could feel the cold damp seeping through his socks. While he can only stare a moment in horror at the devastation wrought, she seems to be assessing, trying to rationalize. Is this loss of life more or less tragic because of the scale, he cannot help but wonder. Here, she is in her element. There are questions, but evidence is to be recovered, analysis performed, conclusions drawn. Facts can be assembled. This, she can do, even as he knows the real explanation isn't to be found in this lonely field. Here, in chaos, she had things under control. *** Sext *** He flew down the highway from West Virginia faster than prudent, careening down the George Washignton Parkway faster than knowledge of the road's curves and deer population would allow a saner man. His foot pressed the accelerator to the floor when he glimpsed the twinkling lights of Georgetown through the barren trees. Bursting through her door, he was not surprised to find Eddie Van Blundht in Scully's home. To find him on her couch, lips inches away from hers, stopped him in his tracks. Van Blundht wasn't just acting out his own fantasy; Mulder had dreamt for years of a scene like the one before him. There had only been a few brief moments when he allowed himself to think Scully would be amenable, and had never considered the time to be right. She was off the couch and at his side before he can breathe, before Van Blundht returns to himself. "Are you all right, Scully?" Before answering, she took two deep breaths, shuddering, "I'm fine," with the second exhalation. Her wide bright eyes say otherwise, and he could almost see the million ways in which she is not, but which she begs him never to acknowledge. She was close enough to touch, but he cannot. Not now. Now it is enough to know that he could. He merely nods. *** None *** The plan was only viable to her, he realized belatedly, because she was dying. At the time she'd agreed, not as recalcitrant as normal, he'd been too heady with plans to think twice. Though she had been many things over the years, a liar had not been one of them. She had bent the truth for him, denied Congress, been creative with details, written case reports that bore little resemblance to the bizarre things they'd witnessed but somehow made them legitimate in the eyes of the Bureau, but never had she spoken falsely. It was only as he descended her building's red-lit emergency stairs, that it occurred to him to wonder at her acquiescence to this most hare-brained of his plans. Two muffled footsteps later, too late, did he understanding sear across his brain. *** Vespers *** Scully's family and priest filed quietly out of the room, leaving her some time alone to recover from the procedure they'd all been set against. They did not invite him to join them for dinner. Her brother had actually glowered in passing. Father McCue merely shook his head sadly; acts of faith were not universal invariants. He waited two minutes before springing off the plastic chair and slipping into her room. The sun was setting, bathing the room in a warm light. Scully seemed to glow, losing her pallor for the first time in weeks. Moving closer, he could see it was only a trick of the sunset. The dark circles under her eyes hadn't magically faded, and her still figure remained too thin. Her eyes fluttered when he took her hand, enclosing its cool delicacy in his own, feeling suddenly massive next to her. Trading one hard plastic chair for another, he settled at her bedside. "Mmmm--rr," rumbled incoherently from her lips. "Hey, Scully." Her eyes fluttered open briefly, then closed again. "Your mom went to get something to eat. I'm surprised Bill was willing to leave me alone with you, given the insanity he thinks I talked you into." Her head lolled a negative. "We'll just have to wait and see. Is there anything I can do for you?" Her fingers tightened against his, almost entwining with his own. He returned the gesture, letting his thumb brush across her wrist. She relaxed, tension leaving her fingers, and her whole body seemed to sink a little deeper into the bed. Much as he wanted to crawl up into the bed with her, he made do with sitting beside it, keeping his thumb on the soft throb of her pulse. *** Compline *** Sometimes he forgot she was beautiful. If pressed to describe her, he would call her brilliant, honest, and loyal, cite her determination and bravery and faith, perhaps mention she was a better shot than he. He was left occasionally astonished when he caught an unguarded glimpse of her and remembered. Oh, but when she smiled, as she did as she told him of the remission, that smile was the one that men fought duels over, composed symphonies for, built temples to. One look at her luminous face, and he'd known. In that moment, she was more beautiful he'd ever seen her. That she was beautiful and going to be well was all he needed to know for the world to be right, for just a few moments. They both seemed a bit surprised to find him leaning down, enveloping her in an embrace. For that moment, he let himself feel plain simple joy. Footsteps on the tile announced the return of her family. He released her and backed away, eyes catching hers for just a moment as something sparked between them, then vanishing as he receded back to his guard post by the door. ****